


Perfect Pitch

by Mithrigil



Category: Chì bì | Red Cliff (2008), Sān guó yǎn yì | Romance of the Three Kingdoms - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Music Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:43:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zhou Yu is not in the habit of asking impertinent questions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfect Pitch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [byzantienne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/byzantienne/gifts).



It is supposed to be an insult, to be asked from whence you came. Kongming keeps a shrine to his ancestors like any other, maintained by his wife in Longzhong. But when you are a hermit on a hill, and Liu Bei himself takes three visits to draw you in to his entourage, and you bring with you a knowledge of terrain that eclipses even the rats that know to flee a sinking ship, you will be asked, _what manner of god made you?_

Guan Yu asks, and it is a question Kongming is entirely prepared to answer. Guan Yu only wishes to know to whom the great Kongming is beholden.

Zhang Fei asks, and it _is_ an insult, as much as it is praise and awe.

Zilong asks, and does not expect an answer.

But Zhou Yu does not ask at all.

-

One might go so far as to say that Zhou Yu is not in the habit of asking questions. It would be facetious, but only so false as the gold one pans for in the riverbed. Only fools ask no questions, and Zhou Yu is no man’s fool.

Perhaps, more precisely, one might go so far as to say that Zhou Yu is not in the habit of asking _impertinent_ questions. But everything in this world pertains to Zhou Yu, from the aforementioned riverbed to its source far beyond the borders of the Southlands.

It could not possibly be that Zhou Yu does not want to know. Kongming finds the thought both troubling and preposterous.

-

“Do you ever notate your music?” Kongming asks him, in spite or perhaps because of the other matters at hand.

“Is it still my music if it is rendered in words?” Zhou Yu asks in return.

Kongming laughs. “For that matter, is it still yours at all, once you have given wings to the sound?”

They are, or ought to be, discussing the dispersal of Sun and Shu troops within the tortoise formation. But the air is dry, as if the river has advantaged itself upon the heavens, and instead everything is in musical terms.

“A man at the guqin,” says Zhou Yu, “who, playing a song that another man has written, places his fingers upon the strings without thought to the absent sound of his predecessor’s instrument, still serves as a conduit for the spirit of the composer. The sounds that ring out through the air are the same.”

 _A platoon commander,_ hears Kongming, _who, heeding the command of his senior officer, marches and engages his men with the enemy, without thought to the greater role he plays in the general’s design, is still an extension of the general’s will. The same goes for the footsoldiers at the bottom rung._

“And yet,” says Kongming, “the very air may stifle the sound of the guqin, no matter whose song it sings.”

He cannot help but wonder what Zhou Yu hears.

“That is why I do not play from tablature,” Zhou Yu says with a smile that curls lightly with the dry summer heat. “If I am to offend the air and the audience, I would not do so by incurring the wrath of an angry composer.”

The metaphor drowns, so to speak, like a land tortoise in water.

-

What Zhou Yu hears, he hears with precision. It takes a man of nuance to transcend the insufficiencies of speech and risk instead the inarticulations of music. His music speaks to Kongming in terms less certain than the wind and the stars, and let the tones are precise and deliberate. Drunk as the rest, more so for his wounds, Zhou Yu does not permit his notes to slur, nor the key to slip down into the registers of Zhang Fei and Liu Bei, who sing with more gusto.

 _Let Zhou Yu lay what plans he will,_ Liu Bei sings, or slurs,  
 _Kongming anticipates his skill.  
The riverbed fair bait did look,  
But ‘twas on land they laid the hook!_

Those few who find the drunken revelry intelligible curl under with laughter. Zhang Fei bellows, and traces otherwise silent corrections in the air with one thick finger. Kongming, who had been laughing, finds himself lost, attempting to read invisible words in the air.

Zhou Yu meets Kongming’s wandering eyes.

 _When great men do not counsel heed,_ Zhou Yu sings, and the pitch is perfect if the tone is rice-wine dry,  
 _They fall for the arch of a smile.  
In word, in gaze, and then in deed,  
Such faith will the mightiest beguile._

He is met with a round of whistles, and Sun Quan is slapped on the back and taunted for glancing at Kongming inopportunely.

But Kongming hears:

 _Cao Cao can be brought down by his own promise of attainment, and I am not the only one who knows this._

“Your turn, Kongming!” Zhang Fei demands, ruffling Sun Quan’s topknot with more familiarity than Sun Quan seems to expect. “Fight that one back.”

“Unless you do not know much of music,” Zhou Yu teases, setting down the glass he has just drained. His eyes burn with daring.

“I dabble,” Kongming says, and he sings:

 _Best then to trust the wind alone,  
The glade, the river and its stone,  
For these make their intentions known  
In music without speech.  
The river’s drums, thus, for our pace;  
The whistling glade, to foes debase;  
The singing wind, to name the place  
That we must strive to reach._

The result, apropos of nothing, is silence and confusion.

Zhang Fei laughs and rolls his eyes. “Not a song for a party,” he growls, and beside him, Guan Yu silently agrees. Zilong shrugs, and gives a polite smile. Liu Bei is drunk but understanding, and Sun Quan still ruffled and confused.

“You’ll forgive a poor hermit for knowing only the songs which please him most,” Kongming returns, “he and what woodland company he keeps.”

“You were raised in a proper house in Jing,” Zhou Yu says, and raises his glass, his eyes heavy on Kongming’s. “But the latter holds true. You sing well.”

-

Zhou Yu does not ask, _what manner of god made you?_ Zhou Yu does not ask impertinent questions. Zhou Yu does not ask Kongming to be aught more than what he is; a man, both older and younger than he looks, who knows the ways of heaven before the ways of men.

Zhou Yu asks, in song and silence, that Kongming listen and learn.

Of course Kongming is eager to do so.


End file.
